Over 100 charities sign up to new text donation offer

Donr, a new text-giving service, has anounced that 150 charities have signed up to its service since it launched at the beginning of November.

SSAFA, the armed forces charity, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, and The Country Food Trust, are among those to have signed up.

The Country Food Trust’s chief executive, Tim Woodward, said : “Text giving is important to us and forms a vital part of our fundraising efforts, we have raised almost £2,500 already using text-giving from donr, with many people choosing to give £20. Our supporters want to donate by text and they are happy to donate bigger amounts this way too. Text-giving is both easy for us to use and, more importantly, is working well for us.”

Charities using the service select a keyword related to their cause for donors to text donr’s short text code. The service allows donors to donate up to a maximum of £20 via their phones, doubling the previous maximum donation of £10. There are no joining or monthly fees for charities to sign up to donr, while donr charge 5 per cent commission on each per donation.

Paul Paterson, COO of donr, said: “Text giving continues to be an important revenue stream for charities, especially as they target the ‘digital generation’ of donors. We’re seeing new charities signing up every day through our online portal, so it’s clear that there is a demand for text-giving.”

Donate simplifies text donation process

Another donation platform, Donate, has launched a new and simplified registration process for charities wanting to use its text donation service.

This service gives charities signed up to Donate access to £1, £3, £5, £10 and £20 text-donations. There are no sign up or subscription fees for charities. If donors opt for Gift Aid then Donate keeps 45 per cent of it to cover its costs or it charges 4.5 per cent per donation when no Gift Aid is added.

St Cadoc’s youth club raised £19,870 using the Donate text raffle service to give away two tickets to the 2018 Champions League final, with each donation entry amounting to £5.

JustTextGiving, a text donation service funded by JustGiving and Vodafone, is set to close in March.

A spokesman for JustGiving said at the time that: “the use of this service has been overtaken by other emerging mobile trends which JustGiving has been at the forefront of developing. The rapid development of smartphone technology has meant JustGiving has had to keep innovating ahead of these trends to support the changing needs of causes and consumers who want to give.”